Woo Hoo!!

Howdy, all!  I'm almost too excited to write this post.  Yesterday my appointment with the bariatric clinic went so well, I almost cried right there on the scale.  I now weigh....drum roll, please....UNDER THREE HUNDRED POUNDS!  (296.5 lb with a BMI of 47 to be exact.)  I can now wear a 3x shirt (I'm wearing the shirt in my new profile picture I put up above under "about me"), and even wore one to my appointment with a new pair of shorts.  I cannot tell you the last time I weighed in the 200's.  I know it sounds atrocious still, but to me, it's a dream come true.  Because it will just be coming down and down to hopefully my goal weight of 160 lbs.  My dear family member (I don't know if she wants me to tell all or not!) is helping me by getting me a gym membership so I can work out on the treadmills and various other equipment.  Exercising in the summer outside in Arizona is NOT fun, let me tell you.  So I am so excited to be able to go to a gym.  :0)  So thank you, family member!  :0)  They gave me a card at the bariatric clinic that I can use at places to eat so I can honorably order the kid's size meals or 1/2 adult portions.  I haven't even thought of going out to eat yet, my stomach is so small I eat a few bites of things and I'm so full it feels like I had a full steak dinner!  I am now on to pureed food for two more weeks, then I can eat soft foods.  I will have to take liquid vitamins and protein drinks for the rest of my life.  No prob....don't want my body to eat off of my muscles instead of my fat!  Ha!  I still am recovering from surgery.  I feel kind of weak still and could use a shot of energy.  Hopefully that will come in time!!  I hope so!!  But so far, so good.

Today I have a doctor's appointment for the rheumatologist.  I can't take anti-inflammatories anymore due to the risk of stomach ulcers and I've got so little stomach left, I don 't need an ulcer on top of it.  So I'll just be on prednisone and deal with the stiffness as best as I can.  After that, we are going to WalMart and I'm going to use that as my daily walk.  I haven't been able to walk around there in years, so I'll take my walker in and do the best that I can.  At least it's air conditioned!  I hate having the arthritis.  I could do so much more without it!

Gina....I tried to get onto your blog but it's been removed from Blogger.  Did you change it?  Let me know.  I miss it!!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for me during my surgery and recovery.  I really appreciate it.  I will post another pic of Jack with his new hair cut.  He's in a better mood this time.....sleeping!!!  Cats!  Where can I sign up for their life?

Hope you all have a great day.
Love ya all!!
Hugs,

Wordless Wednesday - Funny Face!

Here is my addition to "Wordless Wednesday."  It's my silly little kitty boy just freshly back from his bath & grooming.   Gee....wonder if they told him something he didn't like....like he needs to lose a few pounds?  Ha!  Don't we all!!!  Today my hubby and I go to Gilbert for my first two week post-op appointment with the bariatric surgeon.  I'm nervous....I hope I've lost some more weight.  I'll give you the full scoop tomorrow.  Have a great Wednesday!!!  :0)

Here's my "bad" boy......hehehehe.....

Hugs,

Questions, Questions and More Questions!

Hello, good friends and family!  Hope the first week of the New Year is going well for you.  I've had some ups and downs, so I don't know how to answer that appropriately yet!  I visited Fed-Ex's site and finally they updated it.  My reader should be in today.  Yay!!  I just hope the blasted thing works OK.  I have to set up the internet for it, so wish me luck.  I figured I would blog first and then play around with the reader when it comes.  It probably will take me a couple of days to set it up and get my e-books.  I'm so excited!!!  It will be the perfect thing to take with me to the hospital when I have the bariatric surgery.  (Provided that I WILL have the surgery!!)  I lost 25 pounds at my last doctor appointment.  I was so proud of myself, as I have been "pretending" I've had the surgery and doing severe portion control with everything.  So I can still lose weight, even without having the surgery.  I figured I'd start that just in case the insurance doesn't approve of the surgery.  The insurance I'm on has banned organ transplant procedures, so you never know what they will and will not cover.

Speaking of weight loss, I have NORMAL feet again!!!!  Both of my ankles and calves are back to what they used to be.  Yay!!  Unfortunately, the neuropathy is just as worse as ever.  Pain and hot prickly surges go up my legs, starting from my toes.  I don't think that will ever leave, unless I have surgery to de-compress the nerves that are pinched in my lower lumbar vertabrae.  Ugh!!  It's always something, isn't it????  At least I can go from a size 11 woman's shoe back to a 10.  Horray!!

And, yesterday I got a letter from the "lawyer from Hell."  She sent a subpeona (hope I spelled that right!) to an evaluator (she never said who....what's up with that?  It's MY case and she's keeping secrets from me!!) about my case.  This person will provide medical records in my case.  He/She will also testify at the trial.  I've got so many questions for this lawyer, and she won't listen to any of them.  I've got mixed feelings about this trial.  Should I still go?  Even though she said over the phone I didn't have a good case?  And if I DID  win, what would happen then?  I'd lose my state issued insurance for sure.  And I can't go on Medicare for another two years.  So I'd lose all health insurance.  My medications ALONE would cost most of the check.  It's not like we would benefit any from me getting a check at this point.  I just don't know what to do!!!  My family is putting it all up to me.  Yikes!!  If you've got some advice for me, I would love to hear it!!

I was taking a peek at my new camera and downloaded a few new pics of Jack that I took.  One is perfect for "Wordless Wednesday."  You will see that tomorrow.  :0)  But here is a close up of his adorable "lion cut."  I paid $55.00 on that so I love to show it off.  I also love spending time with Jack.  His world is so simple.  Eat, drink, potty and then lay with his "people."  That being me and my hubby.  No worries, no cares in the world.  Where do I sign up for that life????

Isn't he the cutest?  He knows it, too!!!  I just love the little plume on the end of his tail.

OK, I guess that is enough of my ranting for now.  Hope I didn't bore everyone into a coma about my goings-on with the Social Security and Medicare.  It bores me sometimes!!!

Hope you all have a great Tuesday.  I'm thinking about you all!!
Big hugs from me to you!!!
God bless,
Missy

PS....I EMAILED THE WINNER'S ADDRESSES TO THE CONTACT PERSON SPONSORING MY CHOCOLATE GIVEAWAY.  Big Thank-you to Sandy who sponsored me.  May we do this again soon!!  :0)

Merry Christmas, My Friends!

Merry Christmas, everyone!  I am so very thankful to have such great friends.  Both online with the blog and Facebook and off-line with my in-laws, my grandma, my dad, Gina and numerous other family and friends.  I've never been involved with such a big network of people who have done nothing but offer me love, help and support this past year.  I wish I could say thank you personally to all of you, but my friends list is over 1,000 and it's impossible for me to say thank you to you personally.  So to everyone:  THANK YOU SO MUCH AND MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!! 

I don't know if I told you yet that I now have an official hearing date to get my disability benefits.  The hearing will take place January 29, 2011.  I am so totally freaked out.  I will be going up against an administrative law judge alone with just my lawyer, whom I still have NOT seen face-to-face.  She is really great with mailing me stuff and calling, and I already have heard from her twice since I was notified of the hearing date.  She is getting all my recent medical records and also my bariatric surgery appointment records and neurosurgeon records.  I hope everyone cooperates and sends what they need to to my lawyer.  If anyone has gone through a hearing and feel like telling me what your experiences were, I'd love to hear it.  If you don't want to leave a public comment, email me at: missyschranzrn@gmail.com. 

And if that weren't enough, January is the month I start all the testing for the bariatric surgery!!  December isn't even over with and already January is almost booked back to back with appointments for me and my husband!  Yikes!!!  But I have made a pact with myself that for today and tomorrow, I'm not going to think about or be worried about the above projects.  It's Christmas, and I'm going to enjoy it to the fullest!!!  We are going to my sister-in-law's house for Christmas and is so totally a kick butt cook!!  I love her cooking and so does my husband.  Thank you, Barbara for having us and my grandma.  :0)

I can't believe my grandma's time here is almost up.  She will be leaving Dec. 29th, which is the date of my psychology examination for the bariatric surgery.  So my in-laws will be driving her to the airport.  We have had sooooo much fun and laughs, I can't begin to even tell you all the fun we have had.  At first I thought it might be hard to see her and she would remind me too much of my dear mom in Heaven, but I was so glad to see her, it wasn't hard at all!!  She keeps calling me "Cindy", but that's OK.  She did that when Mom was alive, too, so I'm used to being called my mom's name.  :0)  I will be sure to get photos tomorrow of our time at Barbara's, whether Granny likes or not!

Grandma got me a gorgeous new camera that takes beautiful pics and videos.  At the end of this post I will put up new pics of Jack and some videos of our light tours around town.  They turned out so well!  I hope you enjoy them.

I got so many cute comments about the picture I selected for "Wordless Wednesday."  To clear up confusion, the picture is of MY MOM and NOT me.  We got lost in San Diego finding our hotel and when we finally did, she let herself into our room and went right for the bed!  Too bad she didn't like the GPS.  She wasn't going to take orders "from some voice in a box."  Ah, gotta love her!

We got a gift certificate from Frankie's brother and his family (THANK YOU so much, Doug and Patty!) and with it we got a web cam.  So I signed up with Skype and now I need people to talk to!  My dad and Gina will be talking to me with the web cam next week.  That will be so rad!  So if you have Skype, look me up!  My user name is: missyschranz.

OK!  That's enough, don't you think?  I hope you all have fun wherever you go.  You deserve it!!!  Here is my pictures of Jack and the light videos:

 

Jackie has started a habit of sleeping with us every night.  I don't know why I got him a kitty bed!  He doesn't use it (only rarely)!!  We also had him groomed. I love how soft and smooth he feels and he has NO fur mats, either.  It ain't cheap, either.....$55.00 plus tip, but it is sooooo worth it!

"Mr. J."

Well, I tried and tried to get my light videos to upload and they just won't.  I don't know if it is a problem with Blogger, our Internet or the computer.  So here's two pictures I took of some light displays we saw in town.  :0)

For all you "Pooh" fans!  I love Pooh, too!

God bless you all!
Until next post,

PS.....You still have time to enter my chocolate giveaway!  It ends Dec. 30th and you can find the post in my archive under "Another Giveaway."

Can I Have A Do-Over?

Howdy, my fine friends!

I thought I'd start my post with a nifty title like that!  I think I can speak for ALL of us in the Schranz household that this morning was the morning from Hell!!  Even our sweet kitty, Jack had a rough one....here's a pic of him upset with us for taking him from the groomers.  But he soooo needed to go.  If we would have waited anymore on it, I could have taken Jack outside, sprout some roots and call him a little bush.

Doesn't he look a bit "upset" with us?  LOL...he does make a really good kitty bookend, don't ya think?  This morning was terrible for him.  He puked twice in our hallway and had diarrhea to match, except he went into his litter box for that.  Good kitty!  Cleaning up puke is far more better than diarrhea in my book!!  Right now he is crashed out in his kitty bed.  I am right near him in the computer room.  For some reason, he has to be near my hubby or me at all times.  At night time, he loves to crawl on our bodies with those hard paws of his and then he finds the perfect spot right in a "craddle" made of my husbad's arms.  Mind you, it takes him quite a while to find the perfect spot and he is purring so loud he could wake the dead.  But, I look at that cute, furry lil' face and big, expressive eyes of his and I know I'm just SUNK.  He has me wrapped around his shaved "palm-tree" tail of his!!
I always have the groomer shave everything off, EXCEPT for the end of Jack's tail.  There is always a little "plume" on top and I think that looks really cute on him.

The "human" part of the Schranz Ranch had a terrible start of the day, too.  My father-in-law has a cold along with a nice sounding cough, so he has been staying in the bedroom so he won't spread it to others.  My mother-in-law has a terrible neck in that it has the same nerve compression that I have, it's just in her neck.  She has a Lidoderm patch on her neck and right now as we speak she is in the pharmacy aisle at Costco with my husband, asking him if he would give it out as a gift.  Usually Costco sells things as gift quality and if it is, then get it.  We shall see what he drags home.  :0)


My hubby spent the morning bending over, with his head in the toilet, puking his guts out.  He went to his friend's house as he always does and his friend offered him a cold drink.  Frankie said "sure."  He completely forgot about his new life rule that he can't eat cold food or drink cold liquids.  For now.  His stomach and intestines are so delicate from the surgery, it is difficult to give a a result right now.  Life's a bummer sometimes!  Good things really DO come to patients who wait patiently.  

I opened my eyes this morning and just knew it was time to close them immediately!  My lower back hurt so bad I thought I had sprained it some how.  My legs are soooo bad, with shooting pain from the nerve compression areas that I can't even express it with words.  I am using my TENS unit to try and get some relief somehow.  My feet are no better, my big toes are kinda red and very sore.  Probably from the store and walking around so long.  I just can't walk around in stores anymore.  Not until I lose weight and a lot of the pressure is gone from my lower back.

Well, tomorrow I go to the pulmonologist and see if anything is wrong with my lungs.  I thing everything is right from that (lung) point of view.  But you know how the insurance's point of view is.  They are sure and very precise about things.  I hope that everything is alright.  :0)

Alrighty, well, I'm gonna make a simple dinner and go to bed.  I hope that everyone is doing well and is enjoying the last little bit of fall.  Can you believe that winter is almost here? December is almost gone and January is almost here?  Love ya both!!!  Stay warm!!
Hugs,
Until next time,

Life Sucks!

Howdy, my good friends!

Don't ya just love with how I started this post? Life sucks ONLY when you have things that happen that you didn't plan on happening. Like my husband going in for a "routine" tumor removal three weeks and two days ago and he is STILL in the hospital!  And it doesn't look like he will be getting out any time soon. He still has a lot of gastric contents that his intestines just aren't processing at this time. The doctor today thinks that maybe something got "twisted" or kinked in his intestines during surgery, so that is why nothing is going any further than his stomach. So if he doesn't go down in the amount of gastric fluids he is putting out through the NG tube by Monday, then he will have more surgery to see what the problem is.  He's been putting out about 1800 cc's of gastric fluid a 12 hour shift.  That's too much, WAY too much, to have out this late in the game.  My sweetheart has done everything he can to help things along. He walked so much today that the hallways have tread marks on them....LOL!  We were thinking along the lines of when a horse has a twisted intestine you walk them around. Maybe it works in humans, too. Heck, who knows?  The walking certainly can't hurt.

They are limiting him to ONE cup of ice chips A DAY, so he gets like one or two chips several times in the day to spread them out.  He says his mouth is so dry, he can't stand it.  The poor guy is sucking on a wet wash cloth to keep his mouth and lips wet.  And he's gone through two chap sticks so far because his lips were getting all dry and crusty.  I just feel so badly for him. Nothing has gone as planned, as usual. It just seems like Frankie and I can't ever catch a break. We fix one problem, only to have two more waiting in the wings.  I just am praying really hard that the good Lord above will get us through this one. I'll worry about tomorrow next week! LOL!

It's getting harder and harder to say goodbye to him when I leave for the day. I just want to stuff him in my purse and sneak him out and take him home. Can I do that? No.....I can't take him home how he is now. He can't eat and is living off of IV nutrition through a PICC line. When I stop and think about it, he's been having problems with his bowels (severe constipation) and vomiting even before the surgery. We thought it was due to the narcotics that he takes for his leg pains, but maybe not.  So we need to have him "fixed" and if another surgery will do it, that's what we'll have to do.  But it rips my heart out to see the look in his eyes as I bend down to kiss him good night.  I'll touch his brow and he'll touch my cheek and we'll stay like that for awhile, just looking at each other, not wanting the moment to end. But it does end and I waddle with my walker down four floors and out into the humid, HOT AZ heat to our car alone.  This is where life sucks!

I came home tonight and used every last bit of energy I had to take a shower and write this blog post. My legs feel like cement and they are alternating between numbness and tingling to pins and needles and pain.  The muscles in both calves painfully constrict while I'm driving (of course!) and I even had to pull off the side of the road a few times until the spasm passed.  My fibro is taking this ordeal and running with it. No matter what I do, or use or take, the fibro is one step ahead to make my life even more miserable.  I hate having fibromyalgia. I wish I never heard the term. I wish I could bury my head in the sand and forget about life for awhile.  But I must remain strong for my husband as he needs me the most right now. And I will be there for him no matter how badly I hurt.  I took a little self portrait of myself as I felt I wasn't being fair posting pictures of me taken several years ago when I looked "normal."  Or, BEFORE PREDNISONE!  Since I've had to remain on 20mg a day of Prednisone, I have the distinctive "moon face" or "bowling ball head" as my mom lovingly called her own head. She said all she needed was the "finger holes."  She was on the same amount as me.  So, I guess I'll show you the real me, how I look today.  Due to the graphic nature of said photo, you might want to use parental guidance.....I'm not kidding. It's horrible! But it's me and you can see by the bags under my eyes how I'm handling all this.  So here we go......

Hopefully if I can have that lap-band procedure and lose a lot of weight, my Prednisone face will shrink some. Lord, let's hope so!!  But anyway, this is me.  I gotta accept that.  On to better things....

Jackie got his new summer 'do.  About three times a year I take him to the groomer for his bath and shaving. I have them shave all his fur off and he looks just adorable with a shaved body and the furry face. He looks like a "bobble head" sometimes!  But he stays cooler and his fur is a nightmare to try and keep brushed. For one thing, he HATES the brushing and won't stay still. And then it gets horribly matted because his fur is thick and bushy. So shaving is the way to go.  Here is a pic I took of him after his grooming. He looks a little grumpy because I woke him up out of one of his many naps that day.....

Isn't he just the cutest?  I'm telling ya, if you have a long haired cat and can't deal with his/her fur, then shaving is the way to go!!!  The groomer even gave Jack a flea bath because she said she found ONE flea on him.  How does a completely indoor cat get one flea? I don't know about that, but he did get the royal treatment at the groomers.

Well, that it's for now. I'll give you the full update on what happens with Frankie on Monday as soon as I know myself. I plan on getting down there at 7am and waiting for the surgeon to come in and see what we do next.  I love my husband dearly, but he is horrible at giving me details on what the doctors tell him. So I pop along with and that's what I plan on doing on Monday!!  Hope you all have a great weekend and hopefully that picture of me won't give you nightmares....LOL!!

Until next post,
Big hugs,
Missy